City inspections of cooling towers \u2014 meant to prevent the spread of deadly Legionella bacteria \u2014 rose only gradually since last year\u2019s near record lows, according to a Gothamist analysis of public data and numbers provided by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In over 20% of buildings, owners had not submitted required test results in the first five months of 2026.<\/p>\n
The sluggish rate of compliance came ahead of a new cluster<\/a> of Legionnaires\u2019 disease the health department identified on the Upper East Side late last week. It also follows a deadly outbreak<\/a> in Central Harlem last summer that killed seven people, hospitalized 90 and sent the Adams administration scrambling to get it under control.<\/p>\n Health officials are now investigating a cluster of at least 14 cases of Legionnaires\u2019 disease cases in the Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods in Manhattan, all located in the 10028, 10075 and 10128 ZIP codes. The health department said it is inspecting all cooling towers in the affected blocks, and the agency released a video of health commissioner Alister Martin going door to door on the Upper East Side informing residents that the disease is likely spreading in the area.<\/p>\n The latest cluster was identified as the city was in the grips of an unprecedented heat wave, with heat index values reaching 110 to 115 degrees \u2014 weather that allows Legionella bacteria to thrive. The rush to contain it is reminiscent of last July, when health officials under then Mayor Eric Adams first identified the outbreak in Central Harlem.<\/p>\n In the months leading up to that public health emergency, the city had inspected<\/a> 59% fewer cooling towers than it had when Adams first came into office in 2022. Health officials at the time attributed the decline to short staffing<\/a> and budget cuts.<\/p>\n Now, as of late June of this year city employees have only inspected 1,306 of the nearly 6,000 cooling towers in the city since the start of 2026. It\u2019s only a slight increase from 2025, when the city inspected 1,156 cooling towers over the same period before the outbreak began last July.<\/p>\n Those numbers pale in comparison to the more than 3,000 inspections in the first six months of 2017, when the city first implemented cooling tower regulations. Chantal Gomez, a spokesperson for the health department, said the agency \u201cforecasts\u201d that it completed 114 more inspections in June that had yet to be included in the data provided to Gothamist, which would bring the total to 1,420 for this year, 23% more than last year.<\/p>\n In the ZIP codes included in the latest cluster, 48% of the 179 cooling towers went over a year without an inspection by the city, five points lower than the rate across the five boroughs. About 26% of the towers in the outbreak area have no record that building owners tested for Legionella bacteria in 2026. That\u2019s roughly four points higher than the citywide rate.<\/p>\n Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s office did not respond to questions about the small increase in the number of inspections since his predecessor left office and what it was doing to prevent additional outbreaks.<\/p>\n Local law authorizes the health department to conduct unannounced inspections of cooling towers. Gomez said the agency aims to inspect every cooling tower once a year.<\/p>\n But by that measure, the city is also falling far behind. As of April 17 of this year, more than half of the city\u2019s cooling towers had not been inspected in over a year, according to Gothamist\u2019s analysis of the most recently available data.<\/p>\n After Gothamist reported on the staffing shortfall, the city\u2019s health department sought to increase its ranks of \u201cwater ecologists\u201d who inspect cooling towers, which operate as part of a building\u2019s air conditioning system and can spread the bacteria that causes Legionnaire\u2019s disease over an area of several city blocks.<\/p>\n